MIA03FA005 · Cessna 310
Cessna 310 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Merritt Island Airport (COI) to Okeechobee County Airport (OBE)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA03FA005
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 310
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N5247A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merritt Island Airport (COI), Cocoa, FLTo Okeechobee County Airport (OBE), Okeechobee, FL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vmc), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates corrected after review: The narrative states "N5247A crashed about 0.5 NM southeast of Merritt Island Airport, Cocoa, Florida, shortly after takeoff"; the recorded latitude 29.34 is in the Atlantic about 110 km north, off Ormond Beach, and 28.34 at the same longitude is Merritt Island Airport (a one-digit error). No uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
N5247A crashed about 0.5 NM southeast of Merritt Island Airport, Cocoa, Florida, shortly after takeoff. The airline transport-rated pilot received fatal injuries, and the airplane incurred substantial damage. Witnesses stated that on the afternoon of the accident, they observed the pilot enter the accident airplane and while starting the No. 2 engine, they described it as "missing, sputtering, and back firing." During the takeoff roll and the initial climb, the engine continued to make the noises the witnesses described and as the airplane was climbing out, when at an altitude of about 50 to 75 feet, witnesses also noted that the No. 2 engine's propeller had ceased rotating and that the airplane was being banked toward the No. 2 engine. the witnesses noted that the throughout the initial climb the pitch attitude remained nose high, and the pitch was not reduced, even after the right side propeller had ceased rotating. They stated that they watched as the nose high turn continued to the right, and saw the aircraft descend, disappearing behind the trees, followed by the sound of an engine racing momentarily, followed by the sound of the impact with the ground. Examination of the engines, airframe and flight controls did not reveal any preaccident anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to take off with a known equipment deficiency, and his failure to maintain airspeed (VMC) following a loss of engine power to one of the airplane's two engines for undetermined reasons, which resulted in descent and an impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA03FA005
- Event ID
- 20021031X05411
- Case number
- MIA03FA005
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4640f2de8b447348de870a8d716ebd5d94e5ade15c0f793bfb7077719544e402; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:43:35.905Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: coordinates. The narrative states "N5247A crashed about 0.5 NM southeast of Merritt Island Airport, Cocoa, Florida, shortly after takeoff"; the recorded latitude 29.34 is in the Atlantic about 110 km north, off Ormond Beach, and 28.34 at the same longitude is Merritt Island Airport (a one-digit error).